This 'Wolverine' doesn't cut it

The Wolverine himself, Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman, said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, "we could have done better" with the first X-Men spinoff, 2009's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". I actually liked that film, but many comic book fans were hoping for more. Unfortunately, "The Wolverine" provides much less than what is expected from a big-budget "X-Men" action film.

This story begins at the end of World War II during the bombing of Nagasaki. Logan (Wolverine) is being held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. A soldier frees him, thinking they're both going to die as the Americans are about to drop the atomic bomb. But Logan saves the man by shielding him with his body (since he can't die). We shift to present day, and that man is now a Japanese business mogul named Yashida, who is dying and wants to thank Logan for saving his life so many years ago. But it turns out he wants much more than that.

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An assassination attempt on Yashida's granddaughter, Mariko, draws Logan into this family's issues and before you know it, he's back to his Wolverine ways. The rest of the film is simply Wolverine trying to protect Mariko from those who want to kill her, with a little romance thrown in.

I was counting on "The Wolverine" to have a much stronger story. There's lots of slashing, flashbacks and some good action scenes, highlighted by a fight on a bullet train that serves as one of the better action sequences of the summer. However, the best scene in "The Wolverine" comes midway through the closing credits, which doesn't say a lot for the film itself.

"The Wolverine" suffers from being too slow and simple. Jackman does a quality job in the action scenes, but the Wolverine character is way too serious to be delivering one-liners, so the writers shouldn't even try. Director James Mangold ("Knight and Day", "Walk the Line") stages a nice looking film. But you've got to have more bite in the script to keep an audience interested and engaged.